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Archive for the tag “how to make money online”

Movement within a roundabout in a country where traffic drives on the left. Note the clockwise circulation. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Your first priority as an internet marketer is to generate traffic. Everyone having a business online is seeking traffic because it is your life-blood. Without traffic your business will be stagnant and will not make money.

You will have your website or blog ready to go, but no one will know where you are or how to find you on the internet without traffic. So, as you proceed you will find that getting traffic is going to be your number one priority, forever!

A list will allow you to generate money on demand or at will. Therefore, you are going to build your list of prospects early on. This is where you will collect names into your autoresponder series through which you will be able to broadcast messages to your list about your various products and/or services.

By building a list of prospects now you will gather perhaps thousands of customers that you will be able to offer your products and services to. You can offer all of your products including affiliate products to this list of buyers, thus increasing your sales and profits and making money on demand.

I am sure you have heard the saying, “the money is in the list.” It is true and it is the way that all of the top money producers earn a living online. Once you have established your list you will always have someone to market your products to.

And because they have already become familiar with you, whether or not they have ever bought from you at all, you will have established some form of trust and credibility with them, making it easier for them to buy from you.

Further, if a person has given you their email address they are essentially letting you know that they want to hear from you. So why not take advantage of the opportunity and begin marketing your products to them right away?

They are interested in what you have to offer and are more likely to purchase your offer. And one of the major advantages is that as your list grows you will be able to make your offers to your list over and over again by using your autoresponder software to contact them via email.

Building your list will increase sales conversions and profits from your business simply because you have an established relationship with your subscribers. The major reason a person will buy from you is because they trust you. And your subscribers have already established this trust relationship.

If you have a list, you have customers, and this will allow your business to have a life of its own and essentially create an income on auto-pilot. People who have taken the time to build a decent list become one of the top 1% of earners online.

Once you have built your list you will have a very valuable asset that you will be able to charge others for. You will be able to charge other marketers for sending solo ads or other forms of marketing material to your list. This creates another source of income for you!

Click here for a free autoresponder that will help you build your list fast. This autoresponder is free of charge and will allow you to set up your squeeze page so that you will be able to begin collecting email addresses and building your list right away.

Most people are not building a list which is a major contributor of online failure. It is so very important to build your list as it will propel your success forward as an internet marketer. By building your list you will be ahead of the pack with the awesome advantage of being able to make money immediately in a single day when you send an offer to your established list of subscribers.

Concentrate on building a list more than any other endeavor. Instead of going after this new shiny program and that one, build your list. Become one of the top 1% of earners online today by getting started now on building a list that will bring you profits year after year.

Here are 4 secrets to a successful list building program according to the Aweber Blog, who offers one of the leading online services:

Offers an incentive to sign up
Emphasizes the value of your information
Works on building the relationship
Gives the subscriber the incentive to stay

When you set up your autoresponder series concentrate your efforts on the 4 secrets to a successful list building program and you will definitely be on your way towards success.

Most marketerscome online in today’s market seeking an opportunity to supplement their incomes. However, once online the main ingredient for success is often out of reach for the beginning internet marketer.

They are generally bombarded with so much information overload that they do not know where to start nor what it takes to become a successful online entrepreneur.

Contrary to popular belief, it is not such an easy task to make a living online. There are many people who have been online for many years who have not experienced the sweet taste of success.

Of course, there are those who have managed to eke out a living online, yet even for most it has not been an easy task. And, many entrepreneurs who have managed to make a living online have been hit recently by the latest Google Panda and Penguin algorithm.

The new algorithm has placed many online entrepreneurs in a position where they are now making little to no money online while many of them are desperately tring to recover and recoup their losses. They have been essentially ‘Google slapped,’ and are victims of the notorious, ‘Google Dance.’

It only stands to reason that if you have veterans…experienced online marketers clamoring for answers as to how to make a living online, what chance does the beginning online marketer have?

There are many things that a new marketer needs to know, and most of it will unfortunately be discovered through trial and error. Sadly enough, most’newbies’ think that they will be able to go online and within 30 days or so have a business that will be up and running and in profit.

However, there are two main factors that a beginning marketer should be aware of. The first being that it takes money to make money. If you were in a brick-and-mortar offline business it would require investment dollars. And quite a few more investment dollars than an online business. So, put aside funds to invest in your online business.

You can implement free marketing techniques of course, but do not depend entirely on free marketing techniques. Once you have a little to invest spend wisely and invest in tools (software) and not this HOT new program and the next. Stay focused!

The second, and the most crucial and outstanding factor a new marketer fails to realize is that growing a list of prosepective customers is key to both short-term and long-term financial online success. If a beginning marketer realizes at the start that the most important thing they could do is build their list day in and day out, they would be more successful much sooner, rather than later.

Why? Because your list is your leads and your customers that you have built a trust relationship and credibility with and in which you will be able to email anytime and make money on demand. You will be able to send a mailing to your list in the morning and have cash in hand in the evening.

Yet, most ‘newbie’ marketers skip this step altogether in the beginning because they are naive and interested in the make-money-quick scenario. However, if a new marketer would grasp these concepts early on in their internet marketing career and incorporate it into their business plan daily, they will be among the 1% of successful online entrepreneurs in the shortest amount of time.

Social media marketing is all the rage and everyone is participating which is a good thing. So, if you are not on the top four social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest…it is a good idea to become a member and to start social networking on these sites as soon as possible. These sites will increase your traffic dramatically if used properly.

IBOsocial is a very interactive and responsive social network with lots of free tools that will help you advertise your site. This is a must have tool. It allows you to advertise your product or service to people who are interested in your offers. You create your profile and receive points which allow you to mail to their mailing list.

Additionally, this site also encourages you to post 2 free press releases a day on their site with their free press release tool. Your press release will be listed on Yahoo, Bing, Google and a few other sites. The best part about this network is that the users on this site are very receptive and responsive.

Moving up fast is Instagram which is a social media site that is used on your mobile device. It doesn’t matter whether you have an android or iphone device. The service is very similar to Pinterest where you pin pictures of your favorite things.

However, Instagram can only be accessed through your mobile device. Once you sign up with Instagram via your mobile phone only, you will be able to put your product or service on the website via your cellphone. It is a huge and very busy up-and-coming advertising medium.

The great thing about Social networking is that it is here to stay and Google rewards you for participating on the social networking scene. Just make sure that you are commenting and participating as much as your time allows.

No doubt, you are already a member on Facebook so don’t forget that Facebook has fan pages and groups that you can join and sponsor. Google will reward you by having your fan pages and group pages show up on their search engine. So at the very least, set up a fan page for your product or service.

Another free marketing resource is safelist advertising. This is where you join a number of safelists that have a certain amount of members that you are allowed to mail to on scheduled time intervals.

It is a little time-consuming to set up because in order to make an impact you will need to be a member of quite a few safelists. You will be required to sign up for at least 30+ safelists in order for this type of advertising to be effective.

You will be required to use 2 email addresses. One email address will be your contact email and the other will be your list email address. Before you sign up for your safelist accounts you must have your email accounts set up first. I recommend using gmail accounts because you are going to receive a lot of email offers from your lists.

The good thing about safelist marketing is that once you set this up you will be able to use this system year after year. Safelist marketing is especially great if you are promoting a free product as the safelist members are very receptive to free offers.

Traffic exchanges are another free source of advertising. Although, it seems rather mindless to sit there and surf websites, this type of advertising can and will produce sales and leads with your only investment being your time.

The best feature of traffic exchange advertising is that the people surfing these sites are usually looking for business opportunities. Therefore, they will be receptive to your offers. And, you may be receptive to theirs as well. You might find a great opportunity!

As mentioned, often people shy away from traffic exchanges due to the mindless nature of surfing other websites. If you are of this mindset, and you have children, you can pay them a weekly allowance to surf these sites for you. It only takes an hour a day or a few hours a week for you to obtain this free traffic.

Some experts believe that the banner and text ads convert extremely well on traffic exchanges. So, make sure that you take the time to advertise your banners from the programs that you are promoting and place some text ads as well.

Once you have your safelists and traffic exchanges set up you can use them year after year. You can purchase credits for both your safelists and your traffic exchanges or you can simply surf for credits on the traffic exchanges. If you run out of credits on your safelist you can purchase credits or simply delete that account and set up another.

If you are really ambitious you can own your own safelist or traffic exchange for a very minimal monthly fee. This gives you another opportunity to advertise your products and services to quite a bit of traffic because these services are very popular among internet marketers.

Press release traffic is emerging as a good source of free traffic as well, especially after the advent of the Panda and Penguin Algorithm. And, again, you are rewarded by Google for writing and submitting press releases. There are both free and paid press release services that you can submit to. Make sure that you do not over-look this wonderful free source of advertising.

As far as creating your list, it is usually required that you pay a monthly fee for some type of autoresponder service in order to collect email addresses. Therefore, make sure that you save the email addresses that are being sent to your email inbox. Save them in your contacts and build your email address list in that way until you are making money online and are able to afford the monthly fee for an autoresponder.

You will then be able to send your offers to your contact list, and/or use their email addresses to have them join your social media programs. This is a positive step towards building your list and you won’t have the expense of an autoresponder service or the hassle of building a lead capture page.

The bottom line is that as an internet marketer or online business owner you will be required to either spend money on traffic or invest your time in free advertising sources. Some of the free traffic sources do require time to set them up, but it is either your investment of money or your investment of your time.

Of course, You will have to choose between which is most feasible for you, but an investment of your time is better than doing no advertising at all!

Only 1% of online marketersmake money online? Even those who were making a living online were recently hit by the new Panda and Penguin algorithm. Some businesses experienced the ‘Google slap’ and were removed from their lofty first page positions to the back pages of Google and some businesses were hit so hard that their websites were completely annihilated and removed from the search engine totally.

Imagine waking up in the morning to see that your money-making website is no longer on the first page of Google. Then, checking your bank account to find that it is empty! That has been the experience of many online marketers recently. Just imagine that your website is not only no longer on the first page of Google, but upon further investigation, not listed at all.

All of the hard work and sweat that went into building a website. SEO (Search Engine Optimization), keyword research, linking program, article writing and more was all for naught, and all to have it go up in smoke in one day!

I know of a few business owners who were hit so hard that their incomes were completely wiped out. Even after months of trying to recover, they are still experiencing the wrath of the ‘Google slap.’

Hopefully, this will help the beginning marketer understand the concepts of what Google is looking for and to help the beginner start off on the right track, and perhaps prevent the above scenario in the future, the ‘Google slap.’

Following are a few tips to get you started on the right track:

The first thing that is very much over-looked by most marketers is the importance of building a list. We have all heard it, ‘the money is in the list.’ However, it is most often ignored. I have noticed that most people are just not interested in building a list. They want to make money and that is the bottom line.

However, building a list will allow you to be among the top 1% of the money-making producers online. A list allows you to make money on demand. All you have to do is send your affiliate offer or your product or service to your list and you’ll be able to make money on demand and in one day.

When you hear about some guru that made $14,000 in one day it is more than likely that they presented their offer to their list. This is the one secret that most marketers do not incorporate into their marketing plan. Yet, it is the key to making money at will.

So, if you are a beginning internet marketer, make the investment in an auto-responder service and make your main objective building your client base. In the long run you will be in a much better position than most.

Secondly, due to the new Panda and Penguin algorithm it is important that you write content so that the average person can read and understand it. Do not write for the search engine robots with content and/or articles filled with all of your keywords. In other words don’t over optimize your content or you will be penalized for this by Google.

Also, make sure that the links that you share are relevant to your site’s content. If you have a dog grooming website, don’t link to a swimming pool website. Share your links on other sites that are similar to your own.

You will also be rewarded for your social media links. Most everyone has Facebook. However, make sure that you include the top three social media sites which are Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. Your sites will receive higher ranking by creating content for these sites. If you want to be on the first pages of Google this is how to get there.

Also, go to Avatar.com and set up your avatar picture and post it on all of your pages so that Google will know who you are. This also helps in the search rankings.

Additionally, article marketing is not dead. Just make sure that you post your articles to authority sites or hub pages and not to article directories that would be considered spam link farms. You may also post your comments on blogs that are again, related to your site content.

Set up Facebook fan pages or Facebook groups which will also be highly ranked in the search engines.

Hopefully this information will help the beginning internet marketer in your online endeavors and get you off to a good start and the more experienced marketer on the right track towards recovery and success if you have been ‘slapped’. Good luck and much success to you.

There are some sources in my book that were not mentioned. I thought about them later as I was completing some internet marketing tasks so I thought that I would mention them here just to keep you up-to-date on the various methods that you can employ in your internet marketing campaigns.

SocialMarker is a social bookmarking tool that you can use that will post to about 17 of the top social sites that carry a high page rank. Due to the recent Panda and Penguin algorithms implemented by Google you will want to make sure that the links that you build are on hub pages and authority sites so that your efforts will be recognized for years to come. Posting to social sites is within the parameters for having your links remain relevant in the future with Google.

Keep in mind that in order for Google to maintain their integrity and to keep us honest, from time to time, they will change their algorithm. When this happens some website owners experience what is called the ‘Google Slap.’ This is when a website has been ranking on the first page of Google where they are experiencing a lot of traffic and sales and are suddenly removed (slapped) to pages 3 or 4 or higher where they will experience less traffic and fewer to no sales.

Unfortunately, I have a couple of friends and acquaintances that experienced this phenomenon recently with the new Panda and Penguin algorithm. One in particular was slapped pretty hard and is no longer earning the online income that was keeping them afloat. Since none of us want to experience this, it is imperative that you build your links on social media sites and hub pages and authority sites.

In my book mentioned above, there is a Link Directory list. The list is no longer valid as of the Penguin and Panda algorithm and I would not use those directories to build links. I will update this in the book shortly. In fact, I would recommend that you simply spend $5 on Fiverr and delegate that task to someone there. If you can’t spend $5 on your business, you should not be in business!

There was a time when I would do all of my marketing myself. I didn’t want to spend money on marketing at all and I even took pride in the fact that I refused to spend money on marketing. However, once you become accustomed to delegating your tasks or out-sourcing them, your life becomes a lot less hectic complicated. It actually allows you to breathe a sigh of relief.

It frees you up to do more important tasks. At first, I could not really comprehend the importance of out-sourcing because I truly didn’t want to spend any money, but once I tried it and found Fiverr I was hooked. For $5 you can’t beat it! And, these people at Fiverr really put out highly professional products.

Safelist Marketing is free and can be beneficial especially if you are promoting free to join opportunities. If you are really ambitious and would like to own your very own Safelist it will give you an opportunity and a platform to further advertise your products and services. Owning your own Safe-list is fairly inexpensive but it will require work on your part at the administrative level.

If you decide to do only marketing on this platform, you will need a list email address and a contact email address. I would recommend you set them up on gmail because you are going to get a ton of mail. You will also have to set up a lot of Safelist accounts in order for this type of marketing to be effective. Try to set up as many as you can. At least 50+. You can Google ‘free Safelists’ to find the ones that are available.

When I want to promote a free offer fast, I will use this type of marketing and you will get some sign-ups quickly. It is time-consuming so you will want to set up your ad in advance along with the url you are promoting. Do this in Notepad and copy and paste as you go along.

If you have a long url you can use an url shortening service like AdsPlus where you will get paid for promoting the url that you shorten. These short urls are very good for promoting on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and any of the social media sites.

Craigslist is a good place to post anything. You can post free to their classified section, post ads for cars, room-mates, motorcycles, rentals and just about anything that you can think of. I am sure with all of the media publicity about Craigslist that you are familiar with them. I used them to sell a motor-cycle and it was snatched-up within hours. Rabid buyers with cash were lining up to purchase it!

Webinars are a good way to promote your products and/or services. You can check out Webex, while GoToMeetingseems to be the one that most speakers prefer. You can sign up free for 30 days and hold a Webinar free of charge. If you are a good speaker or if your forte is making presentations you could attract a lot of attention for your product or service. You teach your audience something noteworthy during your presentation and at the end of the presentation you can command a higher price ticket item.

Google Plus is a very hot social media platform right now. As a matter of fact it is being touted by some that the hottest social media sites right now are Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. These are the 3 must have social media sites. So if you are not utilizing this service it would be in your best interest to set up your site as soon as possible.

In my book, I mentioned that Onlywire is a social bookmarking tool that you can use to post to 47 social media sites free of charge. However, after signing in to use the site I was informed that there is now a $9.95 monthly fee to join and that my username and password were no longer valid.

Therefore, I sent them an old e-mail that I had received from them dated in the year 2007 asking them to re-instate my account as a free member as I have been with them utilizing their free service for all of these years. Well, they did re-instate my free account.

However, I noticed that you are now able to submit to 300 social media sites for the $9.95 fee. That is all good, but as I mentioned in my book, you can use Fiverr and there are people who will post to 600+ social media sites for $5!

Classified Ad Sites are a good place to advertise depending on your product or service. I have had good results sometimes using classified ads and some times not so good. It just depends on what you plan on advertising . I would recommend that you look through the ads and if you see some that have been listed for a very long time then you know that they are obviously effective, or else they would not have been there over the long-haul. Notice what products or services the ad promotes and if that is akin to what you are promoting, you can place your free ad as well.

If you are unfamiliar with some of the topics covered in this article, go Google it. Become accustomed to doing your research online. It is imperative that you get in this habit from the beginning because you are going to come upon terms or concepts that you have no idea about. So, if you are wondering what I am talking about in any part of this article, again, Google it!

Keep in mind that things change very fast on the web. So, if you are truly new to online marketing, you will see many websites come and go. Change takes place so fast that whatever is happening now may or may not be valid 6 months from now.

So, if you see a company online that has been around for a year or two you can pretty much bet on that site’s relevance, for now anyway. If I am straddling the fence about a business opportunity and I see that they have some longevity, meaning a year or two online, I might take my chances on them. However, on occasion I have based my decision on their longevity and they have still gone out of business within months of me making the decision! So, you just never know.

The last thing that I want to mention is that if you are thinking in terms of purchasing a product or service and you go to the check-out screen and then cancel out, you will be given a message not to leave the page and will be given a second opportunity to purchase the product at a discounted price. Sometimes you will be given a third or even a fourth discount if you keep trying to leave the page. So, leave the page as many times as possible so you can get the best price.

My point is simply, Do not purchase the first time. Click the purchase button as if you are going to purchase and then leave, but hit stay on page, and this usually takes you to a discounted price. Now, on rare occasions you will not get a second chance for a lower price. But in most cases you will, so never buy the first time! Okay, that’s my hot tip of the day!

With the state of the economy, and the current high unemployment rate, I would imagine that there are a lot of people looking to make a living online. However easy it may appear, making money online is generally not an easy task.

I have been visiting the newbie internet marketing forums recently and the main thing that I have noticed is that they do not have a clue as to how or where to begin marketing their products, and services nor do they have a clue as to what to market.

The second thing that I have noticed is that they do not understand that it takes trial and error, research and hard work to become successful as an internet marketer.

Many believe that they can go online and promote a product and within 30 days or so realize a profit. For most, it just does not happen that way. It would be nice if it did. However, if that were the case most of the workforce in the United States and abroad would not have outside employment. They would just go online and start generating cash!

The bottom line is that there are a few things that must be done in order to begin making money online with internet marketing. Here are a few tips that I would like to offer the newbie as well as the experienced marketer:

1. Research is key in everything you do online. If you are promoting an affiliate product, you must research to make sure that the owner of the affiliate program has a record of paying on a regular basis and of course you must do the research to find out how much you will earn per sale.

You have to research the products and services that you are most interested in offering. Make sure that they are products that you would purchase yourself. Your enthusiasm is your best sales tool. Make sure to research anything that you decide to purchase online as well.

You must research the many areas of marketing. If you have a product or service you must research the way in which you will market your product. This includes whether or not you will use a link building program, article marketing, social networking, classified ads, forum marketing, other free marketing resources or paid advertising. Don’t forget that you have the most awesome research tool right at your fingertips. The internet!

2. Experiment. You must experiment with the various marketing techniques in order to see which ones fit your particular business model.

3. Make sure that you incorporate a variety of marketing techniques into your marketing plan. This is often referred to as your marketing mix.

For example, if you choose writing articles as one of your marketing strategies you could then incorporate submitting your article not only to the article directories, but also to social bookmarking sites, then to a forum. That covers 3 marketing strategies. That would be considered your marketing mix for your articles.

However, you must incorporate various marketing mixes into your plan of action. Once you see which combinations work best you will then be able to refine and perfect your marketing techniques and well as your marketing skills.

4. Build your list. It is a great idea to begin building your list from the very beginning of your online marketing career.

There will be some expense required for an auto-responder which you will need in order to build your list, but it is well worth it because you will be able to offer up-sells or other products to the customers that you have established trust and credibility with. Consider them your prospects or leads.

5. Stay focused. That is a major key factor in keeping to what you set out to do online. I think everyone faces this dilemma.

If you set out to write an article, or to post to forums on a particular day, don’t get side- tracked by the many distractions on the internet. It is so easy to go to your email box to confirm a link, and get side tracked on an ad and to momentarily set your attention elsewhere.

Internet marketing takes patience, determination, research and enthusiasm for your dream. Never give up on your dream because if you can dream it, you can achieve it. And make sure you dream big!